


Gravity

by pogopop



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: AU - Astronomer Foggy, First Date, Flirting, M/M, marvelfluffbingo2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29754252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pogopop/pseuds/pogopop
Summary: Matt and Foggy's first date, nothing fancy, just getting to know each other.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Marvel Fluff Bingo, MattFoggy Server Telephone Game Event





	Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill my 'Astronomer AU' square on my MarvelFluffBingo card ( @marvelfluffbingo ) , and for the MattFoggy server telephone game event.

Matt makes his way slowly into the room. The first thing he finds is the couch in the middle, presumably facing the TV, so Matt circles it slowly, his cane tapping lightly between the heavy thud of upholstery on his left and the hollow chink of wooden skirting board. The cane makes a higher  _ tink  _ as it collides with a metal structure and Matt reaches out with his hand, searching, and confirms a metal cabinet. He continues sweeping his cane across the hardwood floor, wary of any rugs, as his hand skims the surface of the cabinet finding photo frames, three clustered plant pots. He sends some loose sheets of paper skating off the surface and freezes, trying to track their direction of flight. 

“Don’t worry about it!” Foggy calls from the kitchen. “I’ll get them.” 

Matt turns his head over his shoulder, towards Foggy, and grins sheepishly. “Sorry. Comes with the territory.”

Foggy tsks quietly. “It’s not a problem. They’re just bills. You said whisky, right?”

Matt nods, “Yes, thanks,” and resumes his exploration. There’s an open doorway just past the cabinet, and Matt pauses, head tilted. “This the bathroom?”

“Yup.”

Matt moves his cane again, and it twangs in his hand with another metal vibration. But this doesn’t feel as heavy as the cabinet. He frowns, and reaches forward as he hears Foggy come up behind him.

“Oh, that’s a little more fragile, but feel free to… feel away.”

Intriguing. Matt stretches through space and finds smooth, painted metal with his fingertips. The metal is curved into a tube, and as his fingers move along it they find an encircling ridge. The object gives under his touch, and he finds the pivot point, the tripod suspending it. He tucks his cane under his arm and takes a step forward, using both hands to get a better idea of its dimensions.

Matt turns his head back in Foggy’s direction. “Is a telescope actually useful in New York City?”

Foggy makes a considering noise. “It’s alright. Not as good as, say, the Socorro Desert. But I can still see things.”

“Does your apartment have roof access?”

“Not the apartment itself, but the super lets me use the service stairs. 

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

Matt files that away, drops his hands and turns towards Foggy. “Shall we sit?”

“Sure.” Foggy moves towards the couch. “Did you find the couch? It’s over here.” He pats the cushion with an open palm, a firm thump of orienting sound.

Matt smiles at him. “Yes, thanks.” There’s a coffee table as well that Foggy forgot to mention, but he expected that. He folds up his cane and drops it on the coffee table and sits down next to Foggy before accepting his drink. “So, what sort of things do you like to look at? You’re not a creeper, are you?” He takes a sip, revelling as always in the first burn.

Foggy laughs loudly at that. “No. I’m an astronomer.”

Matt tilts his head. “You said you were a teacher.”

“I am. I teach Observational Astronomy and Cosmology at NYU.”

Matt laughs. “And here I was, thinking you were a dance teacher.” Foggy had held the class in his palm, everyone drawn to him, like he had the strongest gravitational pull in the room. It had only taken three classes for Matt to succumb, and accept an invitation for a drink.

“That’s just a hobby. I like to boogie. And it’s a good way to meet people,” Foggy says, nudging Matt with his elbow. 

Matt raises his glass, and Foggy clinks them together. “Slainte. So, do you do this often?” He takes a sip.

“Meet people?”

“Bring strange men back to your apartment.”

Foggy laughs at that. “Strangers are friends we haven’t yet met. But, honestly? No. I don’t.”

Matt considers that. He, in contrast, does do this often, but usually only once or twice with the same person. Matt’s a comet, shooting in and out, plenty of noise and fuss but little substance.

“How about you,” Foggy asks.

“Me?” Matt mentally scans through all the men and women he’s dated in recent history. This may not be the moment to share that information.

“How do you make your crust?”

“Oh.” Matt leans back against the couch cushions and stretches an arm along the seat back, towards Foggy. “I’m a lawyer,” he says, mouth quirking in a slight smile, and waits for the inevitable praise. People are always impressed.

“Oh cool. I nearly did Law,” Foggy says. People often say this - it’s one of those throwaway lines. But then he adds, “I was aiming for Columbia but then… I took an intro to Astronomy class over the summer after high school and I sort of… fell into the stars.”

Matt tilts his head. “Tell me about it.”

Foggy hums, consideringly. “I’d always been interested, you know?” he says. “But I hadn’t really thought that it could be my job. I thought it would be fun to take the class, that it would be interesting. So I did.”

“Always a solid choice, choosing the interesting.”

“It was residential, close to an observatory. One morning we got up in the middle of the night, and towards dawn I saw the Orion Nebula. It’s near Orion’s Belt. And it was so beautiful, and unknown. I wanted more. I couldn’t stop thinking of what else must be out there. 

“I mean, we do know a lot now, especially when a probe like Juno fires back information, but also a lot of it we can’t exactly know. No one knows what it’s like to stand on the surface of Eros, not really. Or what the Helix Nebula looks like from the inside. We can model it, sure, but we can’t  _ know _ . I was hungry to find out what I could. I was hooked.” Foggy stops, abruptly, and Matt can hear him sip his drink.

Matt is struck by the emotion in Foggy’s voice, growing with every word. “That’s a great story,” he says. “Not everyone finds their passion, or follows it.

Foggy takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “Yeah. You know, I don’t usually tell people all that, right out of the blocks.”

“I guess I should feel honoured,” Matt says.

“You should, my friend,” Foggy says, the humour back in his voice.

Matt angles his head towards the telescope in the corner. “And that. Do you use it often?”

“Uh yeah, I do, actually.” Matt can hear Foggy shifting against the cushions, like he’s embarrassed again, caught out. “I mean, it’s no match for the Keck telescopes, but it still lets me look. I like looking.”

“Why don’t you show me?” Matt suggests. “I mean, if it’s a good night for it.”

Foggy holds his breath for a moment, then lets out a puff of laughter. “Sure. Why not.” 

It takes a minute to get sorted. Matt snaps out his cane, stashes the whisky bottle under his free arm and holds the glasses in that hand. Foggy is gentle, almost reverent, with the telescope as he folds up the tripod. They head out the apartment door, Foggy and telescope leading, Matt and whisky following, and up the stairwell to the roof. 

The summer air is still warm, but cooler than the oppressive heat of the day. “Over here,” Foggy says. There’s a table and a couple of chairs set up to one side, and Matt settles down to listen as Foggy fusses over the equipment.

“You do do this often.”

“Mmm. It’s nice up here. Quiet.”

Matt listens to the sound of cars rushing in the street below. It’s muffled, sure, and you can’t ever escape cars in New York City. But Foggy’s right. It is peaceful.

“What do you see?”

“There’s still some light in the sky from the sun, but Mars is close and bright. And Venus. Not that I need the telescope for them.”

“You don’t?”

“Not to find them. They’re just like bright stars. But it’s not really dark enough yet. I’ll wait a bit.” The other chair creaks as Foggy sinks into it. “Tell me about your law practice, Matt. Are you a corporate hotshot?”

“Not so much.” Matt shrugs. “It’s just me and my partner Kirsten, and our paralegal Karen. I mostly do what Kirsten says.”

“Partner?”

“Business partner,” Matt says, smiling at Foggy. “Best friend from law school.” 

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Small stuff, mostly. Tenancy disputes, work visas, that kind of thing. Most of our clients come from here in the Kitchen.”

“Sticking up for the little guy!” Foggy cries. “Show me some skin.” Matt holds up his palm and Foggy high fives him. “That’s what I wanted to do.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Well, like I said, it was the stars. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d learned in that in astronomy class. And I’m good at Math, so that helps. I ended up switching from Philosophy to Physics before the year started. And then I went on to get my doctorate at UC Davis. My parents were devastated when they realised I wasn’t going to drive a Bentley” he says, laughing.

Matt laughs with him. “Academia isn’t really a way to make money, is it?”

“It’s really, really not. Not like law. Mom wanted me to be a butcher but that was never going to happen, so at least I could have done something which would have made me rich. Such a disappointment.”

Matt laughs at that. “You sound like me. I’ll never be rich.”

“Your family counting on you for the bucks, too?”

Matt sobers. “Uh, not exactly.” He needs to get off this topic, now. “How far into the galaxy do you usually look?”

“The radiotelescope guys look right back in time, as far as we can look. But I kind of like our neighbourhood - our solar system. Each planet in our solar system is a whole world. Well, obviously they literally are worlds. They’re suspended, hanging in the enormous void of space. They look so serene, from Earth, as they hurtle through the endless blackness, but they’re dynamic and complex. Did you know that the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is so large that two Earths could fit side by side inside it? It’s an enormous storm that’s been raging for at least 150 years, probably much longer.”

Matt shakes his head. “I don’t know much about any of it.”

“We’re all so far from each other, and together at the same time. Once you leave our solar system it’s 25 trillion miles to the next one.”

“The next galaxy?”

“The next solar system. Our galaxy is fifty-two thousand light years across.”

Matt shakes his head. It’s too big a number to make sense.

“We’re bound by gravity to the rest of our solar system. There are so many stars and planets out beyond the Kuiper Belt,” Foggy continues, “And we’ll never be able to reach them. We can’t even see most of what we know is out there, we just have to make an educated guess at it, work it out from the clues.”

Matt half-smiles to himself, and takes a sip of his drink. “Seeing and knowing are two different things.”

“Uh, yeah, of course, I didn’t mean to--” 

Matt cuts him off with the wave of his hand. “So you took the class, and fell in love with astronomy?”

“Oh no, that happened much earlier. Growing up in the city I never saw that many stars, you know? When I was eleven I went away on summer camp to this place upstate. We stayed in these little cabins in the woods by a lake, just outside a small town. It was weird - so quiet, but sometimes you’d hear a wild animal. And at night, the stars! I didn’t know the sky could be like that. Like grains of sand scattered across a velvet blanket. I’d sneak out in the middle of the night when the sky was truly dark, and the entire sky was covered with stars. The trees were only visible as the places where the stars weren’t. 

“I discovered later that Aboriginal people in Australia, who live in the desert where obviously it’s really dark and the sky is very clear, have constellations that are the darker areas between the stars. The reverse of us who live with more light pollution. All people look up at the stars. We all wonder.”

Foggy suddenly sounds like he’s come back to himself, remembered where he was. “I’m sorry, I’m doing all the talking and this is probably really boring.”

“No,” Matt says quietly. “It’s not. I’ve never heard a description like this before. I-” He cuts himself off, unsure how to carry on without making himself sound wistful, and smiles. “I like it. I like listening to your voice.”

Foggy makes a quiet, pleased sound. “That’s a great line. I feel like I should be saying things with gravitas, or beautiful things. _She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes,_ _the slow dance of the infinite stars_ ,” he quotes.

“Now that’s pretty,” Matt says.

“It’s Neil Gaiman. And he’s right, about the stars and planets dancing, caught in each other’s gravity.”

Matt smiles. “So then, tell me,” he prompts, gesturing upwards. “What’s there to see tonight? You said Venus?”

“Let’s see.” Foggy stands and goes again to the telescope. Matt hears the quiet scrape of metal as Foggy adjusts the focus. “There’s Jupiter. It’s high and bright right now. And Venus and Mars.” 

Foggy’s quiet, and Matt considers how far away his focus is. It’s hard for Matt to have a clear impression of anything beyond the reach of his hands - when he’s not touching something it could be anywhere, just out of reach or miles away. But Foggy looks at planets thousands of miles away, places he can never touch but he knows.

“Sometimes it’s better not to use the telescope at all,” Foggy says. “The Leonids meteor shower is going to arrive in a couple of months, and that’s better observed with the naked eye.”

“What are meteor showers like?”

“Fireworks. Bright, white hot stripes painting the sky. Streaking across the heavens.”

“But no boom.” Matt places his empty glass on the small table next to the bottle, and his glasses alongside.

“Good point! And several nights in a row. I’m looking forward to it.” Foggy sounds like he’s turned back to the telescope. 

Matt stands, the whisky now making him loose-limbed and easy, and walks slowly towards Foggy. His hand is slightly extended, reaching for the tune Foggy’s humming under his breath - it’s  _ Drops of Jupiter _ . He clears his throat. “And what do you see, closer to home?” His voice is low and husky.

Foggy jumps and turns and his arm bumps Matt’s hand. “Oh! Um. Well.” Matt hears him take a quick breath, as Matt brings his hand to rest on Foggy’s shoulder. “I can see at least one beautiful thing.”

“That’s very cheesy,” Matt says, sliding his hand up to Foggy’s neck, then further to cup his cheek. He fans his thumb across to Foggy’s mouth, finding a goatee, and feels Foggy lean in to match him. “But I like it,” he breathes.

Foggy makes a small noise of pleasure for the brief moment that his warm, soft lips are pressed against Matt’s own. Matt brings his other hand to Foggy’s face, sliding both hands back and finding that Foggy’s hair is pulled back into a low pony.

“I didn’t think long hair would be allowed, Professor?” Matt asks.

Foggy huffs a laugh. “It’s  _ Doctor _ to you, and anything goes these days.” He rests his forehead against Matt’s. “I like you,” he says, breathless.

“Really,” Matt says, one eyebrow lifted.

“I promise I’m usually better at… Words. And things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, I can totally show you. But I feel obligated at this point to tell you that my super has a CCTV camera on this rooftop, and he is probably watching us right now because that’s the kind of guy he is. So, maybe we could take this back downstairs? If I’ve wooed you enough with the stars.”

“I could stand to hear more,” Matt says. “But yes, let’s go inside, and continue the story there.” And Matt follows Foggy again, drawn along by his gravity. He wonders what happens to a comet that gets caught in a gravitational field it can’t escape, wonders if he’s going to find out.


End file.
